Is it, to borrow from the U.S. Vice President, a big f*****g deal or not?
As U.S. and Russian leaders sign a new strategic arms limitation treaty in Prague, where President Obama delivered a kind of carrot-and-stick speech a year ago, pundits are still scratching their heads a bit over how much the treaty will deliver and how significant it is. Initial news reports often said that the treaty would reduce nuclear warheads by 30 percent and warhead launchers by 50 percent, which turned out to be quite misleading. The New York Times in particular, despite excellent analytic coverage of the treaty’s history and implications, did a disservice by citing the 50 percent claim is its opening news report and by repeating it in an editorial the next weekend.
Follow-on reporting soon revealed that the treaty would reduce U.S. missiles and bombers by only a small fraction and Russia’s not as all, as its forces were already below the 800 launcher limit. The confusion arose, explains Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association, because New Start reduces launchers with reference to the 1991 Start 1 treaty limits, not actual force levels.
Even the more modest 30 percent warhead cut turned out, on closer inspection, to be questionable. Because each bomber is counted as having a single warhead, regardless of how many warheads are actually aboard, there is no sure way of determining what the actual number of operationally deployed warheads is on either side. This anomalous situation also is a legacy of earlier negotiations, says Thielmann: It was agreed to assign one warhead per bomber because determining the actual number of bombs on each plane would have required verification measures much too intrusive for Russian taste.
So, taking all that into account, how big a deal is the treaty? Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, calls it “the most important strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty in nearly two decades.” That’s because, he said in a phone conversation elaborating on the statement, since START I in 1991, START II never entered force, START III talks never really got going, and “SORT wasn’t really much of treaty”—its only significant contribution was to add warhead targets, but without adequately defining operational warheads.
Though an administration spokesman recently defended New Start with the observation that it was negotiating with Russia, not the Arms Control Association, Kimball is perhaps New Start’s most emphatic defender. He is calling on the administration to “undertake a smart, government-wide effort to mobilize the Senate to consider and approve the new treaty before year’s end.” Other arms control pundits, from Stanford’s Pavel Podvig to the Nukes of Hazard, characterize the treaty’s provisions as merely “modest,” all using that exact word.
Considering that this is not a treaty to light a fire in anybody’s belly, and taking the Republican Party’s strategic obstructionism into account, can Senate ratification of the treaty be assumed? Will it be like the health care battles but even worse, with the administration struggling to corral all Senate Democrats and then riding out to round up eight Republican defectors to give it the 67 votes needed? Or will the support of Defense Secretary Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Senator Lugar–and record-high spending on defense and the nuclear weapons labs–be enough to guarantee prompt bipartisan passage?
For decades, the best Senate vote counter in the arms control community has been John Isaacs, at the Council for a Livable World. (May we call him our Nancy Pelosi?) Asked whether it will be a vote-counting situation or smooth sailing, and whether the Senate ultimately will ratify, Isaacs said yes, no and yes. Ratification will require vote counting and it won’t be easy going, but ultimately the treaty will win the Senate’s support—though perhaps not till after the midterm elections in November. “It won’t be as bad as the health care battle but it will be a similar outcome,” says Isaacs-Pelosi.
Assuming the treaty passes as Isaacs expects and Kimball fervently hopes, will its provisions satisfy the non-nuclear weapons states when they convene in New York City next month for a review of the Nonproliferation Treaty? And does the treaty’s adoption signal a new era in U.S.-relations—and, indeed, should it? Two concluding comments. . . .
First, the treaty’s new warhead and launcher limits are indeed very modest; I personally would characterize the treaty, like last December’s Copenhagen (climate) Accord, as the bare minimum acceptable. At Copenhagen, the developing and what once were called the non-aligned nations took everybody by surprise with a serious walk-out threat. So the possibility of a Group of 77 rebellion in New York cannot be excluded. Nevertheless, bear in the mind that the annoying question of New Start launcher numbers really is not an issue in this context. When it comes to the NPT’s clause requiring disarmament on the part of the nuclear weapons states, what counts (or ought to count) is that the United States and Russia have actually cut their launchers by close to 50 percent in recent years, not what the New Start treaty says.
Second, though there’s a train of thought that New Start is more important in terms of U.S.-Russia relations than it is in the context of long-term disarmament efforts, that may not be the case. The argument assumes that friendly U.S.-Russian relations are intrinsically a good thing, regardless of what’s going on and what’s at stake. “Resetting” relations does not necessarily mean making them friendlier. It might just mean making them franker. Obama’s speech last year in Prague is remembered these days mainly for its commitment to nuclear disarmament. But it also contained at least by implication some remarkably tough talk about Russia—and it won’t hurt for that to be recalled, too, as New Start heads to the Senate for ratification.
